How to Vet a Personal Injury SEO Agency: Questions, Red Flags, Contract Terms

Vet a personal injury SEO agency the way you would depose a witness: ask specific questions, ask for documents, and pay attention to what they won't commit to in writing. The four things that matter most are whether they can show you exactly what they will do each month, whether they understand the advertising rules your firm answers to, whether you own everything they build, and whether you can leave without penalty. A promise of a specific ranking or a number of cases is not a selling point. It's the first red flag.

Start with where you found them

If you searched for "best personal injury SEO company", look at who published the list you landed on. When we checked 16 personal injury marketing searches in October 2026, most of them came with a Google AI Overview, and legal directories and "best agency" list articles held many of the top positions. A list can be useful. It can also be written by one of the agencies on it. Read the list as a starting set of names, not as a ranking, and do your own vetting from there.

Ten questions, and what to listen for

1. "Show me a monthly report from a current client, with the client's name removed."

Listen for: a report that lists every link built that month, with the live URL, the page on the client's site it points to, and the anchor text, alongside rankings, map visibility and inquiries.

Be wary of: a dashboard of charts with no list of actual work, or a refusal to show anything until you sign.

2. "What will you do in the first 90 days?"

Listen for: specific items such as a Google Business Profile review, citation cleanup, a technical audit, keyword research for named case types and cities, and a plan for the first pages.

Be wary of: "We'll start optimizing" with nothing more concrete.

3. "Which of our case types and cities would you focus on first, and why?"

Listen for: a reasoned answer based on your competition, not just search volume. A good agency might tell you that "car accident lawyer" in your metro is a long project and that truck or slip-and-fall pages in two suburbs are a better start.

Be wary of: a plan to rank for "personal injury lawyer" across your whole metro in a few months.

4. "How do you handle our state's advertising rules?"

Listen for: an understanding that you are responsible for what appears on your site, that your state's version of the ABA Model Rules governs (Rule 7.1 on misleading communications, Rule 7.2 on specific requirements such as naming a responsible lawyer and limits on specialist claims), that states differ, and that a lawyer at your firm should approve content before it goes live.

Be wary of: an agency that writes "best car accident lawyer in [city]" on your home page, or puts invented testimonials or case results on your site.

5. "Where will the links come from?"

Listen for: types of sites, how they are chosen, and a commitment to list every one in the report.

Be wary of: vague answers about a "private network", or a refusal to name any examples.

6. "Who will actually do the work?"

Listen for: whether writing, links and technical work are done in-house or by contractors, and who your contact is.

Be wary of: a senior person on the sales call who you never hear from again.

7. "What happens if we cancel?"

Listen for: you keep the website, the content, the Google Business Profile and your analytics, with no fee to transfer them.

Be wary of: an agency that owns your domain, your profile or your site, or "licenses" content to you only while you pay.

8. "How will we know if it's working?"

Listen for: tracking tied to your intake, such as inquiries by source and signed cases by landing page, and a straight answer that results take months to appear and depend on your market and your competitors.

Be wary of: success measured only in traffic or "impressions", with no link to inquiries.

9. "Do you work with competing firms in our market?"

Listen for: a clear answer, either way. Some agencies take one firm per market; others don't. What matters is that you know.

Be wary of: an answer that changes between the sales call and the contract.

10. "What would make you tell us SEO isn't the right spend for us right now?"

Listen for: honest conditions, such as intake that can't answer inquiries, a suspended profile that needs fixing first, or a market where you need cases next month and paid search fits better.

Be wary of: an agency that can't imagine a firm it wouldn't take.

Red flags in one list

• Guarantees of rankings, a position in the map, a number of cases or a settlement-related outcome. Nobody controls Google, and outcome promises about legal matters can create problems for you under your state's rules.
• Long minimum terms with early termination fees.
• Ownership of your domain, your Google Business Profile or your website held in the agency's name.
• No list of links or work performed in the report.
• Keyword stuffing in your Google Business Profile name.
• A proposal that is the same document they'd send a roofer, with "law firm" pasted in.
• Fake reviews, review gating, or paying for reviews in any form.
• An agency that sells your firm's leads, or leads from your market, to other firms.

Contract terms to read line by line

Term	What to look for	Why it matters to an injury firm
Length	Month to month, or a short initial term	Your caseload and budget change; SEO should not trap you
Cancellation	Written notice, no fee	Leaving should cost you nothing but the next month
Ownership	You own the domain, site, content, profile and accounts	Your firm name and reviews are your business assets
Access	You have admin access to analytics, Search Console and the profile	You should never need permission to see your own data
Deliverables	A defined list per month	You can check whether the work happened
Reporting	Every live URL, target URL and anchor text	A link you can't see is a link you can't evaluate
Content approval	A lawyer at your firm approves before publication	You answer to the bar for what appears on your site
Confidentiality	The agency keeps client and case information confidential	Rule 1.6 applies to your firm, and your vendors' habits affect it
Pricing	Fixed monthly price, published or in writing	Avoids arrangements tied to signed cases that raise Rule 5.4 questions

Apply the same questions to us

We are an agency too, so ask us all ten. We have been doing SEO since 2009, our plans are month to month, and each monthly report names every live link, the page it targets and its anchor text. What we cost and what each plan includes is in our post on personal injury SEO cost, and what a realistic timeline looks like is in how long personal injury SEO takes. You can read more about how we approach SEO for personal injury law firms on our home page.

If you want to put the questions to us directly, start with a free SEO case review. We will answer in writing, and we will tell you if we think you'd be better served spending elsewhere first.